A Dialogue with Joseph Smyth from 1992 to the Present

(in progress)

One of the most interesting people that I have met in my life is Joseph Smyth, architect, and visionary in the United States of America. I met him in the early nineties, when a friend had referred me to him as one of the persons that might be relevant for the evolving Global Villages idea. Since then, we have had lots of discussions and fruitful exchanges.

I invited Joseph Smyth twice to speak at the Global Village conferences in Vienna [1], and I want to focus publicly on our controversies and commonalities, because after so many years I think that nobody represents the possibility of a positive dialogue between American and European patterns better than him.

Joseph is the creator of visions that combine the strength and the creative boldness of the American dream with the appreciation of the wisdom that lies in thousands of years of traditional cultures, and he has also digested quite a bit of the "European Dream" [2] speaking to its strengths. Very slowly I would like to unfold elements of our dialogue here.

Let me take you on an unusual journey.... Let me show you a man who deliberately lived for many years in the heart of the dehumanizing suburban nightmare, that makes up the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and who keeps putting forward timeless values of what we in Europe are so very much neglecting: the values of the village. He shows that the village could and should be reborn in bold new ways while at the same time honoring the countless discoveries made over thousands of years of village life, he unveils a dream that has emerged out of living fully through the adventures and disadvantages of the modern world, a dream that offers us compelling views of the 21 century global village.

List of subpages (still to emerge)

1. EncounterInThousandOaks
2. EconomicPowerOfSustainableDevelopment
3. PlanningAndPlanting
4. CulturalVersusNatural
5. CityAndVillage?
6. DareWeDream?

Comments and Discussions

sorry it takes so long...

here is some writings by Joseph: The Historical Roots of Sprawl

and this is work using Josephs original work (eight principles of sustainable community development) Ken Dahlberg builds on Joseph Smyth